BLAH

THE PROBLEMS WITH THE WRESTLING SUBCULTURE ON THE INTERNET

I was chatting with my close personal Internet acquaintance Gene White the
other day, and he said something that led me to this article. He said many
of his friendships are based on a singular shared interests, and there is
very little overlap between the interests. That is, he has different
groups of wrestling friends, car friends, and friends with other shared
interests, and only the best friends tend to transcend these categorical
lines. At first I thought this was odd, but upon further thought I
realized it's this way with most people; we share a lot with our closest
friends, but we know lots of people that share only one major interest (be
it football, reading, or wife-swapping) in small subgroups. The so-called
Internet Wrestling Community is a large example of this sort of
entertainment subculture, though most of us only "know" each other in the
loosest sense. However, I believe that this particular subculture has
reached a point of diminishing returns characteristic of any subculture
that exists long enough and develops enough negative tendencies. Though it
still has good qualities, the negatives have grown to outweigh the
beneficial.

The very fact that you're reading this article indicates you're at least on
the periphery of the Internet Wrestling Subculture, but you may need some
clarification of exactly what I mean when I say "subculture." The
definition you'll find in most dictionaries is far too general for my
purposes, and lots of the definitions you can see floating around the 'net
are too packed with pompous academic jargon. For the purpose of this
article, a subculture is a loose organization or community of people whose
interaction is based on a shared interest and a notably greater dedication
to that interest than would be found in a "typical" person. The keys to
this definition are the loose organization, the single interest, and the
greater-than-average dedication.

There are rabid subcultures of various sizes for virtually any hobby,
activity, and profession, and I personally am or have been involved in many
of them, from wrestling to quiz bowl to résumé writing. Beyond fitting the
above definition, all subcultures share certain general characteristics,
which you'll no doubt recognize if you've observed the online wrestling
world for long. Among these characteristics are specialized terminology,
active venues of discussion, and a somewhat ambivalent relationship with
both non-members of the subculture and often with the object of the
subculture. However, these things aren't particularly positive and
negative on their own, so I'm not going to discuss them in depth here.

So you understand I'm not being relentlessly negative here, there are still
good features of the online wrestling subculture. First and most simply,
it allows people who are strongly interested in wrestling to find people
with similar interests across a wide geographic range, which can be
extremely important to those in isolated areas or who have few
wrestling-fan friends. Second, the subculture has spawned a wealth of
informational resources. These resources are especially helpful in giving
newcomers a sense of wrestling history, something that tends to be lacking
in today's programming and casual fandom. Finally, the online wrestling
subculture is at least capable of producing an interesting and energetic
exchange of intelligent ideas about wrestling, though you'll see below that
I think that happens all too rarely.

Now then, what are the negative aspects that have come to overshadow the
good in the online wrestling community? I'll talk about several under
their own headings.

Cynicism and Jading: This is one of the most immediately noticeable
characteristics among large segments of the community. The current
wrestling product is primarily to be disdained. Wrestling was more
entertaining in the past, but if something that worked or would have worked
in the past is tried in the present, it's no longer good enough (an
amazingly contradictory love/hate relationship with history). It is a sad
commentary that one of the major, if not the single dominant, trend in the
online subculture is bitterness over not having one's unrealistic
expectations catered to.

Obsession With Trivia: This is frequently a subcultural characteristic. It
gave rise to The Nitpicker's Guides to Star Trek, which at least didn't
hate their target. Combined with the cynicism mentioned above, it produces
the sort of people mocked in the "Please Please Please Get a Life
Foundation" episode of Animaniacs or the Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons.
People, these are not meant to be compliments to those of you who act
remotely like that! In wrestling, this obsession with useless information
covers both on-screen and off-screen issues, from wrestlers' real names to
Pay-Per-View won/lost records. Just knowing this information wouldn't be a
negative on its own, but far too many people analyze it as though it has
meaning, and some even predicate their enjoyment on such trivia or expect
wrestlers to care about it as much as they do.

Inflated Sense of Importance: This applies two different ways. First, as
suggested by the last point under Obsession With Trivia, notable portions
of the online wrestling subculture overestimate their importance to the
wrestling business. Not only is the fanatic online subculture a very small
portion of wrestling viewers, it is frequently dominated by views that are
completely unrepresentative of the bulk of casual fans. Second, many
members of the community have an inflated perception of the importance of
themselves and the community in the world at large. The inaccuracy of this
sense of importance is especially apparent when those members try to write
about more serious and large-scale issues using the same slapdash approach
they use to comment on wrestling. This lack of perspective often leads to
problems on all sides.

Conformity and False Authority: Ideas in online wrestling often fall into
two categories: first there is the wholly predominant idea held by a vast
majority of online wrestling fans, and second there is the opposed set of
ideas espoused by two vociferous groups. In the first case, a person with
an opinion opposed to the dominant idea (e.g. someone who says "I like Hulk
Hogan.") will be looked down on by a majority, while in the second case the
person will be attacked by whichever side he or she is perceived not to
have chosen. Even more problematic is that these sorts of ideas are often
championed by people who know little more about wrestling than the average
online fan, but who have falsely set themselves up as authorities by virtue
of yelling louder and advancing clever-seeming but ultimately useless
panaceas like "What the WWF needs to do to improve is write better
storylines."

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: This offshoot of False Authority is one of the
most negative characteristics of the current online wrestling scene. It
works like this: someone who is regarded as an authority makes a statement
about something in the wrestling world (usually behind the scenes) based
loosely on fact or perhaps only on opinion and hearsay. He (I won't even
say "or she"; see below) continues to repeat it, or other people repeat it,
with or without the note that it's not actual fact, and eventually it
spreads far enough and the origin of it becomes distorted enough that
unwitting people accept it as fact, no matter how ludicrous, unproven, or
even flat-out disproven it may be. To put it another way, Stephanie
McMahon is solely responsible for writing WWF scripts, HHH is the most
manipulative man in wrestling, and Konnan is a white guy from New Jersey.
These self-fulfilling prophecies corrupt the informational resources that
are one of the positives I mentioned above.

Sexism: I would make a bigger deal of this, but sadly it grows out of
wrestling itself. To put it simply, go to any wrestling message board.
Find out how many posters are male, how many female, and how many are male
pretending to be female. Male posters will outnumber female 10 to 1 at
least, and males impersonating females will probably come close to equaling
females. Then read the comments regularly made about women in the
messages. There you have it.

Hostility to Newcomers: This is perhaps the most aggravating negative
tendency I can think of in the wrestling subculture, and it's probably the
one that most retards the community's ongoing growth and development. In
many online forums and on many sites, people who are new to wrestling or
new to wrestling discussion are at ignored, patronized, and flatly insulted
by people with more experience. This attitude is pathetic and damaging.
While the resources to present wrestling and its history to newcomers
exist, they must be accompanied by a basic level of acceptance from more
established denizens of the community. Any subculture that refuses to
admit new members is one that is destined to atrophy and die of old age or
disinterest. Besides, newcomers help alleviate cynicism and jading,
bringing us full circle.

Now that I've presented some of the more prominent and harmful negative
aspects of this wrestling subculture, you may want to know why I'm still
part of it. Well, I think it can be fixed and be an excellent place once
it is. How should we fix things? There's not exactly an oversimplified
panacea (go figure), but this piece can get you started. Look at the
positives I listed above and act to accentuate those positives in the
community. Look at the numerous negatives and see what you can do to
downplay those tendencies in yourself and others. Think of other positives
and negatives that I didn't cover. Encourage the free and intelligent
exchange of ideas with all sorts of people in discussion. A little
awareness, cooperation, and improvement from all community members will go
a long way toward making this online wrestling subculture worthwhile.